Good for Virginia. Must happen everywhere it is introduced.
My new state of Arizona better do the same. Pathetic that a Republican governor and a Republican president are endorsing this legislation which denies due process.
RICHMOND, Va. – Republicans in Virginia’s legislature are on track to kill almost all gun control legislation touted by Gov. Ralph Northam, D, as a priority, including a “red flag” bill aimed at preventing suicide that has been endorsed by the Trump administration and passed by Maryland and 14 other states.
The Republican purge of gun bills is an annual event but comes during a year when all 140 seats in the General Assembly are up for election and moderate suburban voters who tend to favor gun control have been tilting toward Democrats.
Republicans hold a two-vote majority in both the state Senate and House of Delegates, and while some vulnerable GOP lawmakers are moving left on issues such as raising the legal age for tobacco purchases and approving the federal Equal Rights Amendment, guns remain a hard-line topic for rural legislators who control the committees that decide which bills survive.
More than a dozen gun-related bills died in a state Senate committee on Wednesday night and a similar slate fell in a House subcommittee on Thursday night. A ban on bump stocks – devices that boost a gun’s firing rate – survived in the Senate but was referred to another committee where it’s likely to disappear. And a House bill requiring home day-care providers to keep guns locked up around children is being retooled by Republicans and could yet make it to the floor.
by Gregory S. Schneider and Laura Vozzella
